Utah Trip

I have tried to post this several times, but Blogger (or our internet) has thwarted me every time!! I'm trying it one more time!

Life has been so crazy busy lately, that I never got back on here to post the pictures from our whirlwind trip to Utah at the beginning of the month. We all made it out there to surprise Brian's dad for his 70th birthday. We also managed to squeeze in a quick trip down to Provo to meet up with Carol & Geddy and give them some things they hadn't been able to take back on the plane last month when they'd been out for Carrie's wedding.

Also, we took the boys up to the Provo temple, showed them the MTC (Missionary Training Center) where both Brian and I had spent 2 months when we'd gone on our missions, drove around BYU so I could show them where I went to college, plus did drivebys of my old dorm and the apartment complexes that I'd lived in during my 4 years at BYU.

The boys at the Eyring Science Center at BYU

After that, we drove up to Salt Lake City for the initial surprise of Grandpa Val. He was very surprised!!

The Lookouts (Joshua, Nathaniel & Ashlynn)





The whole family (minus one grandson who arrived later that evening)

The next day we did a short damp tour of Temple Square with the boys (rain didn't really want to go away). Then we all met up at Toucanos (a Brazilian restaurant that made Brian miss his mision) and had lunch. Even more family came to that!

After that we were able to meet up with a friend of mine from my mission...Carolina was the first person I taught on my mission. I hadn't seen her since I left Spain in February of 1997. She has since served a mission, married and now lives in Salt Lake with her husband and one of the cutest little boys I've ever seen!

After that we went to visit the Olivers - friends from our old Ward and old town who had moved to Utah a few months before we moved up here. It was so good to see them...we have missed them a lot.

Then it was back to Brian's brother's house for more food and family. We left Sunday morning for the long drive back and made it home with two sleeping boys and two sleepy parents. I don't know if I'd want to do this often (and definitely not more pregnant than I was at that point!) but hopefully the next time we make it out there we can have more than a couple of days so we can catch up with more family and friends and show the boys some of the places where their several greats grandparents (on Brian's side) lived.

SEVEN YEARS!!!!!!!!!!

This post is almost a week late due to a whirlwind trip to Utah last weekend.

On April 30th, Joshua turned 7! We spent the entire day in the car driving from California to Utah...leaving around 8 am and arriving around 11:30 pm (that counts losing an hour with the time difference). Not one bit of complaint did we have from him. He is such a wonderful kid!

We'd planned all along to celebrate his birthday on the evening of the 29th being as Brian has class on Thursday nights. So he still had his cake and presents and all. Nathaniel really really wanted to be the one to open up the gifts, and big brother let him help a bit (he'd already opened one present earlier in the day that had to be repaired before the party.)

The cake Joshua wanted me to make was in a little cookbook you pick up at the checkstand. It was a cute dinosaur. It turned out okay - he loved it.
It is so hard to believe that Joshua is seven already -where have the years gone!

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008


2009

What a week!!!!!!!!!!!

It started out normally enough. Monday was Joshua's last day of spring break. Brian had classes. However, he returned home at 10:30 that morning...half an hour before his 2nd class ended...and with the hour drive each way to campus, I knew he must not be feeling very well. He hadn't been feeling well since January - having a flare-up of his Crohn's disease. He'd lost 35-40 pounds since then and ate very little.

Tuesday morning, before going to sewing at church, I tried to talk him into going to the clinic here in town. After I left, Mom talked to him. When I called him around lunch time, he wanted the name for the clinic. To make a long story short, he got in that afternoon and was immediately sent to Yreka to the ER for a CT scan. That was Tuesday afternoon...he came home Thursday afternoon. Feeling a little better. With three prescriptions. A follow-up CT scan was yesterday and the inflammation was down (last week they couldn't even see his appendix!) and the pressure that was causing problems with the kidney is getting better. He's being referred to a GI specialist (since Redding has none that will take the insurance we're in the process of getting, he gets to go back to the guy he saw in Sacramento 2 years ago) and we'll see what happens from there. He is now trying to get up enough energy to go to Davis to work this weekend...as well as try to get caught up on his classes being as today was really the first day he went to class in about 2 weeks.

On a brighter note...last Tuesday was also Joshua's first T-ball game. Being as I was still at the hospital with Brian, Mom came home from work (and relieved Grandma who had come up to watch the boys when Mom had gone back to work after lunch) and got him all ready. It was so cold...when I'd driven back home and came through Fort Jones at 6pm, it was 39 degrees! And with a biting cold wind. She got a some good pictures of him, despite the cold, sitting on the damp ground and holding a wiggling Nathaniel.

His second game was on Thursday and the weather was much nicer. I got to watch all of that one. He played catcher and shortstop. He throws pretty dang good...but we need to work on catching (his mitt is pretty stiff and needs some work!) and hitting. Brian is hoping to get feeling better soon so that he can get some practice time in with him.

Easter Morning

For the first time ever, since we've had kids, we were able to do the Easter basket thing in the morning...Brian has always had to be at church early it seems like and there just was never time. This year, he had no early morning meetings, so the Easter bunny was able to come, bring baskets and hide eggs in the morning.

Last year's Easter egg hunt, etc. is a blur to me and I don't remember how "in" to it Nathaniel was. This year he was pretty dang excited to look for those eggs.

So was Joshua, but he did restrain himself and let Nathaniel find 6 eggs (there were a dozen) with minimal help and interference.

They were both happy with the little things in their baskets...Nathaniel got a m0nkey beach towel and pjs...summer stuff that just wouldn't work to wait for his birthday at the end of August. Joshua got a Star Wars quote book (from the orginial 3 movies) and a summer outfit. The Easter bunny brought minimal candy this year, but there was no complaints. (Easter bunny must have gone shopping for treats after eating a big lunch or something :))

For some reason I can't get pictures to load into blogger right now...I'll load them into my facebook account and post a link and you can look at them there until Blogger starts to behave itself!

Easter Egg Coloring time...

Usually Brian does this with the boys. Or, if Carrie happened to be over she'd help with it. But since she's moved on to bigger and better things (married life) and Brian is working, it was my turn to do this with the boys. I know we colored eggs last year, but honestly I don't remember how or when they got done. This year I'll remember...the boys had fun. Joshua worked really hard at getting his eggs just right. Nathaniel had fun - the first year he's really been able to color eggs without sitting in someone's lap. As you can see from the following picture, at times I wasn't sure if we were coloring eggs or Nathaniel's hands!

More pictures from the wedding weekend...

When we went down to Sacramento for the wedding we stayed at Brian's brother & sister-in-law's house in Woodland...the boys started out the night sharing a bed. Nathaniel didn't last long before he climbed in with us (he was removed by me and put in our bed actually - he'd rolled on to Joshua's head!).

Sunday we went down to Grandma Darlene's for dinner and time to visit with Uncle Ken & Aunt Liliana and my cousins, Denisse & Brandy and meet Brandy's daughter, Addison for the first time. (Brandy's husband Nick as well as my brother-in-law Scott hadn't made it out for the wedding because of work).

Nathaniel was pretty tired after all the excitement and travel.

He wandered off, as is his tendency lately, and was across the street playing with rocks & pine cones for awhile. Addison joined him. He'd throw rocks in the road and she'd through them back. Neither were overly cooperative about pictures. I got a few of Nathaniel...


He refused to look at the camera - unusual for him...

This picture is my favorite (since he looked at me!) But it isn't focused well (I was suppressing a sneeze!). I look at it and try to figure out who in the heck does he look like...he doesn't even look like himself in it. He looks like pictures of my dad when he was little. I'll have to find one to compare.

Group shoots taken in Grandma's backyard...

Grandma & her grandchildren

Grandma with her son & daughter, 6 granddaughters,

3 great-grandsons and 1 great-granddaugther

Grandma's six granddaughters - Beth, Denisse, Brandy,

Sarah, Carol & Carrie

Grandma Lorrayne & Grandpa Bruce with their

three grandsons - Nathaniel, Geddy & Joshua

Carrie's Wedding

On Friday, April 3rd, my youngest sister, Carrie, got married in the Sacramento Temple. I didn't get many picturest taken at the temple, or anywhere else for that matter, but I did take a few that I will post below.

Ben & Carrie Saunders
the happy couple

Nathaniel in front of the fountain - praying or pouting?

Three cute cousins

Our Family

Sarah, Carol, Geddy, me, Nathaniel & Joshua

Brian & the boys